Telstra have announced an additional 1,500 phone boxes have been converted to WiFi Hotspots. This almost doubles the total hotspots nationwide and Telstra says since launch, they’ve had an impressive 1 Million unique devices access the free Wi-Fi. According to customer feedback, the service is typically strong enough to let them stream video, update apps and almost instantly share photos on social media which has lead to more than 270 TB of data downloaded since November.

This extended trial is a precursor to the full rollout which will see users able to connect to their home account and leverage the far greater data cap, while out and about. At home I now have 500GB to use per month, but just 3.5GB on my mobile plan. While there’s not blanket coverage everywhere outside your front door, if you’re anywhere near the center of a reasonably sized metro or regional city, you could easily find some phone box WiFi to connect to.

Telstra aren’t done yet, they’re now expanding the roll out to an additional 60 towns and suburbs with locations as far afield as the Whitsundays and Mount Gambier expected to be connected. The neat thing is that you can vote to tell Telstra you want it rolled out in your town, suburb or area.

Non-Telstra customers and Telstra customers who have not joined the Wi-Fi community will be able to connect to the residential Telstra Wi-Fi hotspots for a small charge using guest passes. To take advantage of the free trial Wi-Fi trial users need to find their nearest hotspot at Telstra.com/wifi or on your mobile device once you’re in range of a hotspot, look for Free_Telstra_WiFi and Accept T&Cs and begin using the free Wi-Fi.

You can register your details to receive more information about Telstra Wi-Fi as it’s released by heading to www.Telstra.com/wifi.